Aug. 7, 2012

Lindsey Greeb, a Colorado State University senior majoring in landscape architecture, weeds perennials while working at the university's Plant Environmental Research Center on Tuesday. CSU's proposed on-campus football stadium would be built on land where the center currently stands. For video from PERC, visit www.coloradoan.com. / Rich Abrahamson/The Coloradoan

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The fate of CSU's Plant Environmental Research Cen...: The fate of CSU's Plant Environmental Research Center amid on-campus stadium discussion

About CSU’s Plant Environmental Research Center

• Been in operation for 40 years; the greenhouses have been open for more than 60 years. • The PERC site is more than 10 acres and boasts an arboretum, greenhouses, a perennial garden, ornamental grasses, plant research, a hedge collection and more. • Under the proposed plan, the on-campus football stadium would assume five to six acres on the PERC site and likely move plants and research south to a floodplain. • Information: hla.colostate.edu or (970) 491-7019.

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As the day on which Colorado State University President Tony Frank will decide whether to build an on-campus football stadium draws closer, debate about whether he should OK the proposal has intensified. And the issue strikes an emotional chord among project opponents who fear the university will “pave paradise,” as singer Joni Mitchell once said, “and put up a parking lot.”

Except, in this case, we’re not talking about a parking lot but a potential 43,500-seat on-campus football stadium that would disrupt and displace — at least partially — what some call CSU’s agricultural “hidden gem.”

The university’s 40-year-old Plant Environmental Research Center, located at 630 W. Lake St., is better known as PERC. It boasts more than 10 acres that nourish a public garden with plants of all types, hedge collections, an arboretum and several greenhouses that protect decades of research.

CSU student Lindsey Greeb is intimately familiar with visitors’ awe of the more than 600 species of flowers and ornamental grasses that grow here, as she often cares for the plants and records data about their growth and health.

The gardens, and PERC as a whole, are “invaluable,” a “hidden gem,” she said, discarding weeds into a bucket by her feet in Tuesday’s blazing sun. And she couldn’t imagine campus — or life — without it there.

“Obviously, it’s near and dear to my heart,” said Greeb, who’s studying landscape architecture and environmental horticulture. “So, I’m not one of the proponents of the on-campus stadium.”

Plans have the proposed stadium located off Lake Street. A north-south orientation puts its approximately 12-acre footprint on top of open space and two existing parking lots on the southern side of campus.

If built, it would also assume five to six acres of the PERC site. This means removal of the hedge collection, greenhouses, Quonset huts, trial gardens and current student research projects, said CSU professor Jim Klett, PERC’s director.

A longtime landscape horticulturist, Klett worries that each of these things would be moved to a floodplain — CSU owns property near its ropes course along Centre Avenue, between the Hilton hotel and Gardens on Spring Creek.

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“I’m concerned about the cost to move and to rebuild those things that might be moved from PERC if the stadium gets the go-ahead and that we will get short-changed,” Klett said. “I also don’t want to give up 32 years of research we’ve been doing at the site.

“And you can’t just rip up graduate student research projects,” he said.

Preliminary estimations are that it would cost more than $9 million to move PERC with no upgrades. Officials have stressed that graduate student research projects must be seen to fruition and that new greenhouses would need to be completed before any plants, or other research, could be relocated.

In a public forum last week, Frank responded to similar concerns voiced by attendees and said PERC and its plants would not be thrown into the on-campus stadium’s shadow, should he approve its construction. Amy Parsons, vice president for university operations, said in May that she’s visited the site and that PERC has a master plan for redeveloping the site.

CSU has envisioned turning the PERC site into a way to highlight the university’s agricultural tradition.

“It’s one of the best things on campus, and I’d be really sad to see it go,” Greeb said. “As an agricultural school, I feel like it’s in our character and it’s in our heritage that we should have some bit of green space on campus.

“And this garden, the arboretum and the organic garden are pretty much the only little chunk of agricultural land left here,” she said.